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Nice session today, with henke, Jeshibu, Malf, Jason Moyer and PigLick - and, very briefly, demagogue, though he kept running into problems with his installation, which meant that he could either not join or he was thrown off the server after a few moments.

The first mission didn't work, but we then did that rarest of things with Arma - we won three missions in a row. Well, I say 'win', but the first two missions didn't properly trigger the ending. All three were assaults on towns or guard posts; with mission 1, the helicopter that should've come in to extract the survivors never showed up, with mission 2, one AI stayed behind in the outpost that we'd 'liberated' and the boat that Malf, henke and me were in wouldn't move.

Mission 3, though, after a bloody standoff against an MRAP, was a success; most of us got blown up by the armoured vehicle's gun once or twice, but then henke took it out with two well-aimed rockets. I didn't do particularly well all mission, but I got to the one surviving enemy unit and took the guy out, so we actually saw the "Mission completed" screen properly.

Thanks to everyone for joining in - I'm hoping to run another session in two weeks, on 27 April. Will confirm at a later stage and send around PMs on Steam.

I'm still not 100% sure why I was kicked... Reading the forums, either a mod wasn't installed (I didn't have all of them installed when I started; only about 1/3 of them), but the other thing going on was my wifi tanked (as it's being doing lately) and I had a really weak signal. I had a yellow chain most of the time I was in (meaning a really high ping), so I was wondering if incomplete info was getting through since that sounds like the kind of thing you'd get a verification issue with. Or it was the mods. I guess we'll find out next time.

Next time you can join in, let's see if we can perhaps do a quick test beforehand, to see whether/how it works. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even have to be around at the same time, I can just leave the server running at some point if you want to check whether you can log in without being kicked again. If you want to do that, just let me know when it would suit you.

Why do 95% of all Arma stories begin with "In spite of technical issues..."?

So yeah... Things didn't start well today. After Malf had to reinstall things, it took quite some fiddling to get the radio mod to work at his end. Then we ran into problems with two of the missions: one had a scripting issue where the car we were in drove off but the camera stayed stuck in place, the other threw us into the jungle where we couldn't see the enemy until they saw, and shot, us.

However, we still had two very nice missions, starting with Operation Ocean View, where henke, Malf, Piglick and me took out two enemy camps. It was a simple mission and one we'd played before, but after the problems we had getting the radio mod to work at Malf's end it was nice to have something clear and challenging but not unfair. We took care of the camps without any casualties on our side and won the mission. Yay!

Negotiation was also fun, but not quite as successful. We were tasked with taking out two enemy leaders who were entering negotiations. Did henke, our marksman, take one of them out at a distance? I'm not entirely sure because I was under fire at the time - but then the other target jumped into a pickup truck and tried to escape. We just about got him before he was gone, but by that time we were under fire from several directions. I went down once or twice, but Malf got to me just before I bled out. We then cleared out a (mostly already cleared, to be honest) camp and found and liberated a hostage, at which point we could've used a smoke grenade to call in the extraction chopper - but we decided to go for one of the optional goals: destroying an enemy arsenal. We were giddy due to our success so far, with Malf and Piglick heading there in a 'liberated' pickup truck and henke and me on a quadbike. I think we may have stopped too close to the arsenal and in a bad spot, because before we had eyes on the enemy they started firing on us. I went down, then henke and Piglick, and while Malf tried to stabilise and revive me, he caught a bullet as well. Game over. Still, fun mission - and I prefer losing a mission in an interesting way than winning because the AI went on the fritz.

I'm not sure yet whether the next session will take place in two or three weeks. Will post an update once I've figured it out.

@Jason Moyer:
I've not yet played any End Game missions, I think. I'll have to check them out, especially how many players are needed and whether/how well they work in coop.

@PigLick:
I know what you mean. Having the right scope helps, but I also like me some close-quarter, town-clearing combat. It's always a bit difficult to pick missions because it's never entirely clear how many people will turn up, but I'll have a look around for some missions set in and around towns. We also have some such missions that we've played before but that are flexible enough to be played more than once.

By the way, if any of you know of or find any user missions that look interesting and that don't use mods beyond what we have (or that use mods that might be worth checking out), let me know!

Next time I wouldnt mind trying a mission thats more close quarters, like clearing out a town or something, rather than the long range stuff we seem to do. Mainly cos I suck at long range stuff.

Worth watching if you're interested in that kind of thing. Close quarters fighting is much more dangerous in any kind of "realistic" setting (even airsoft/paintball), doubly so when you're dealing with the fidliness of controls in a simulation.

My impression is you don't have the same situational awareness in a sim though.
So in a large open environment, it's easy to lose track of where people and places and signs of the enemy are around you, and you can be taken down without even knowing where it was coming from.
In a close quarters environment, it's easier to have a feel for where things are so you can more quickly respond, and you at least know where to hide from.

Until I got this new computer, my screen was pretty small though and contributed to that issue.
The bad thing about this new computer is wifi sometimes doesn't connect (a driver issue?), which is why I couldn't join this last game. Sorry. It's a weird problem I'm not even sure how to diagnose.

Whenever I play with Malf, Henke and Thirith I feel like they are doing all the heavy lifting and I just run around like a headless chicken. I have a lot of experience with arma2 but not so much with 3. Not that I dont enjoy it, tis great fun and arma3 is a very pretty looking open world style sim. Maybe I should go support/medic roles.

Nah, don't worry about it PigLick, I feel completely useless most of the time too. I struggle to even see the enemy a lot of the time, and while it's more realistic, I find the lack of damage feedback when you fire at an enemy to be disconcerting.
I'm only really at home when blowing stuff up or healing fallen buddies.

Iím definitely going to check it out. How many players are the coop missions designed for? Thatís the main problem with our sessions: Iíve got about 500 missions downloaded, but once you subtract the ones broken by updates, you donít have all that many that work for 4-6 people. The more we are, the wider the range to choose from, but missions for 10+ people usually donít particularly work if youíve got 4-5 people playing. Iím hoping weíll manage a few sessions where we can play missions that have different teams and roles, e.g. a small unit on the ground and a chopper providing Close Air Support.